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I told you I’d be putting up a tutorial!
Some of my U students had asked about using LAB mode for B/W conversions, so I made up a quick tutorial for them. Click on the Picture to View it
The VIPhaunts also get an action that goes along with this, using the LAB conversion but also some extra steps to finish it off.
You can become a VIPhaunt simply by joining the Phaunt Forum and then check out THIS THREAD.
I had a question about cropping to the Rule of 3rds easily in PS so made a quick Tutorial for it and an action you can use to do it quickly and easily.
1. Open up your Photo and find your Custom Shape Tool
2. You’ll need to make sure you have a specific shape loaded into your Shapes, so after selecting you custom shape tool do these steps:
3. You’ll get this Dialogue Box:
4. Find the GRID Shape
5. Be sure to have the right Shape type selected (so that you make a new layer you can delete later)
6. Put the new shape layer on top of your photo to check if you’ve cropped at the Rule of 3rds:
OR
That’s it!
I’m attaching an action that will do all those steps for you (you MUST Have the TILES or ALL custom shapes loaded into your custom shapes though or it will give you an error). And then you can just resize the shape to use it as you want.
And GUESS WHAT??? Later this week I am going to be unveiling the FIRST STEP in the new Photoshop Naked project.. I am VERY VERY excitd about it and can’t wait to show everyone! So be checking the blog to get a peek at what’s coming!
Oh.. and some random photos from last week with the new 5d and 85 1.2 (which sadly has to go back in a few days)
If you have someone with deep-set eyes or under-eye circles it can be a pain to fix. Here’s a really quick way I use and get great results most of the time:
1. Do your regular skin smoothing/healing first, then DUPLICATE your layer (so we’re not working on the background Layer)
2. Zoom in to the eye area:
3. Now grab your PATCH Tool
AND use these Settings in the ToolBar:
4. Now, with your patch tool selected, make a selection underneath the Eye that selects the area we are fixing.. like So:
5. Now, simply drag that selection to an area directly beneath it that has “smooth” skin, like so:
6. You’ll notice that we now have some freakishly smooth skin going on now..
That’s easy to fix.. now, before doing anything else (or the option will be greyed out).. go to Edit-Fade Patch Selection (or Shift+Ctrl+F) and then you can pull the opacity of the smoothed eye to about 50-70% or so and let a teeny bit of the natural lines back in:
BEFORE/AFTER:
It’s that simple!This is a bit smoother than I normally do, for illustration purposes 
You can do multiple patches, and use CTRL+H to hide your selection (do it again to get it back) if you want to see it without the marching ants around it.
I know it’s been awhile, so I made a quick tutorial for you all on a super easy and quick way to do some simple skin smoothing.
And on a side note, after looking at the picture of myself used in the tutorial.. I realized how much I look like my mom:
Crazy Huh??!
Be sure to look watch for a post about how you can win a VIP yearly membership this weekend…. post coming soon!
I frequent Scott Kelby’s Photoshop Insider Blog because, let’s face it, he’s the go to guy for Photoshop networking and news. I happen to think he’s a great guy as well, and genuinely cares about all of us photoshop users and helps bridge the gap between Adobe and those who use PS on a regular basis.
So yesterday there was a post by Corey Barker of Planet Photoshop that I absolutely love. It really describes what I think is the BEST way to learn in Photoshop. Many tutorials are a “Do this and this and this” without really helping you be able to translate that to any of your other PS work. But this tutorial really resonated with me because it helps illustrate how I’ve learned a lot of what I know about PS (which compared to these guys is not a lot :D).
Corey Says:
“I am often asked how I come up with some of the stuff I do in my tutorials. To put it simply, it’s a lot of experimentation. When it comes to Photoshop, the only limitations seem to be that of the artist or photographer using it. One can spend a tremendous amount of time learning the textbook functions of Photoshop but to achieve something remarkable one must be willing to look beyond the obvious and strive to present something in a new or unusual way, or even create something no one has ever seen before.”
That basically sums up why I LOVE Photoshop. You can create anything you want to, just play and have fun!
The rest of Corey’s post is HERE.. and be sure to watch the video tutorial included, it talks about the concept in more detail and illustrates how he went from one thing to another and learned in the process!
This is a method that I use all the time to do headswaps/composites. If you have CS3 then this is the easiest way to do headswaps/montages/composites, you’ll wonder what you did without it!!
CLICK ON THE PIC TO VIEW THE VIDEO
Thanks to Cindy Dover for the pics for the tutorial!
p.s. I realize the sound on the tutorial is kind of whacky, it was late and my stupid mic was acting up. Sorry! 
Is it?? Oh My Gosh, it is!! A video tutorial!!
I figured you all would give up on me if I didn’t get SOMETHING up for you. So this is a way I’ve been playing with lately to do some more custom vignetting to my photos. I actually love using Lightroom for this now, but you can’t crop in LR or you lose the vignette, so this is great for a quick custom vignette.
CLICK on the photo to view the Video
That’s it folks.. have a fun weekend
One of the questions I get constantly is what is the “right” settings for web sharpening.
Well, the reality is, there is none! Sharpening is a pretty varied practice (as is EVERYTHING in Photoshop) and if you have a method that works for you, then stick with it! Just be willing to try different things and change up the routine. The best practice is to use some different methods depending on the photo you’re sharpening. Some photos have hard edges (like buildings or very contrasting colors) and can “soak up” more sharpening than a portrait can. You will need to make your sharpening decision based on what is in your image.
The basics of web sharpening are simple, however. I’m going to keep this to using the USM since many readers may not have Smart Sharpen available (only in later versions of PS).
One very simple method of sharpening is to sharpen when you resize your image! When resizing your image you’ll have a few different options. To do a quick sharpen simply check “Resample Image” and switch to “Bicubic Sharper”.
Many times this is all the sharpening you’ll need.
If this isn’t enough, there’s a few different things you can try in the USM box.
Unsharpen Mask is found under the Filters-Sharpen Menu and looks like this:
The way the Unsharp Mask filter works is really to increase the contrast between adjacent pixels in your image. The result makes your image appear sharper.
AMOUNT Slider changes the increase in the contrast of the pixels. The higher the percentage, the higher the contrast between the pixels will be.
RADIUS Slider changes the width of the “band” of sharpening around the object. Pulling the radios very high will make halos appear in your image. (Though you can do a pretty cool effect if you pull it all the way up. Try it!) The greater the radius value, the wider the edge effects. And the wider the edge effects, the more obvious the sharpening.
THRESHOLD Slider is where you tell Photoshop how to differenciate what is an “edge”. Set too low, EVERYTHING will be considered an edge, and noise may be sharpened too much. Set too high and no sharpening will appear to have been done.
For a WEBSIZED image the basic settings that *I* follow are usually:
High Sharpening:
Amount: 110%
Radius: 1.0
Threshold: 0
Medium Sharpening:
Amount: 110%
Radius: .5
Threshold: 0
Low Sharpening:
Amount: 70%
Radius: .5
Threshold: 0
You can easily change these amounts to suit your photo!
Another “trick” that I sometimes use is to apply the high amount of sharpening and then immediately go to Edit-Fade Unsharp Mask and change the opacity of the USM to fit the photo.
*note, some people also use this to change the mode to Luminosity to avoid any color shifts when sharpening*
The last method that I use sometimes is to do a 3 pass USM that does a small USM filter 3 times successively. Sometimes this really helps to “tease out” some sharpness that isn’t appearing with the normal websharpen.
Often times a quick USM is all it takes to make a photo POP for web viewing.
Here’s a quick set of websharpening actions that have a High, Medium, Low and 3 pass method.
And hey.. Leave me a comment.. I like to know if you’ve been here.
Till Next time! Have a great Weekend!
Today starts the Birthday celebrations!
Just a little something to get going.. A tutorial on Brushes and how they apply to masking (requested by the fabulous Tiffany 
)
And because I love to give stuff away.. I’ve got 2 great coupons for you that work all this week, just in celebration of phaunt’s first birthday:
If you use the code: phauntbdaybig you’ll get $35 off ANY purchase of $75 or more.. that means you could get the Presets for just $60!! Or, snag the Pro Pak for only $40!
Or, if you’re just looking for something small to celebrate with.. use the code: phauntbdaymini and get 10% off anything else in the store. Or use both coupons on seperate things (can’t be combined though, duh).
So watch a video, grab some goodies, there’s more to come this week.
Got the tutorial done (goes with Friday’s freebie). This is going to show you how to use clipping masks. It’s super duper easy, you’ll be amazed that you haven’t been using it before now!
And on a side note.. I just realized that on April 23rd, we will be at the one year anniversary for phaunt actions.. can you believe it?? I’m amazed! I need to come up with a cool contest huh?
Keep your eyes peeled for that, I’m sure I’ll come up with something
Have a super awesome week